Making The Team Project Individual Reflection Paper

Individual Reflection Paper
Your Name
Subject and Section
Date
Central Challenge
Our group focused mainly on deciding the different themes and theories that our team wants to report. Our team brainstormed for varying topics and each of us presented our chosen topics to the whole group. The topics presented are about creating shared values, corporate governance, employed status for innovation, and low-priced leadership. My original topic of choice was the low-priced leadership; however, my group members insisted to change my topic of choice to correspond or fit the theme of other topics chosen by my group mates. I changed my topic and chose another one, making my new topic to be about flexibility leadership. The central challenge that I faced was to find a way to settle a dispute about my original choice and its compatibility with the topics of my group mates. As a result, I retracted my initial choice and compromised with the decision of my group mates. Although my new choice is what I think the best option to meet the theme of the other topics, I still can’t write what I wanted to write in order to uphold my decision to compromise with others demands. According to Kabanoff (1989), compromise is the way of dealing with conflict in terms of cooperativeness and assertiveness by balancing one belief with another through gaining and losing preferences in both parties. Assertiveness is the conviction of appealing interest of oneself and cooperativeness is level of concern for other people's interest when making one's opinion (Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). The advantage of using a compromise to address conflict is that both parties can agree on the terms easily since there is no clear winner or losses in this conflict management and can rapidly mend conflicts; however, compromise will not yield the greatest result in terms of improving relationship between conflicting parties and ideas (Kabanoff, 1989). Unlike other conflict management styles, where there should be a clear winner on whether who is right or wrong, compromise neither views who is right nor wrong but produce a decision that has both losses and gains that seems neutral to the parties involved (Kabanoff, 1989).
Theory
In 1986, Dean G. Pruitt and Jeffrey Z. Rubin described a theory on how people respond in a social conflict. They called their theory, “Dual-concern theory” (Cai & Fink, 2002; Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Holt & DeVore, 2005; Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). The dual concern theory generalizes the motivational orientation of conflict in the levels of concern in either two personal motives. The two personal motives are: the concern about the interest of oneself and the level of concern for other people's interest (Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). The theory addresses the different conflict resolution style to determine the ways on how individuals approach and manage interpersonal conflicts (Gabrielidis, Stephan, Ybarra, Dos Santos Pearson, & Villareal, 1997). It can be visualized using a four quadrant grid or a managerial grid that proposes the relationship of equating the concern for others in the y-axis against the concern for the self in the x-axis (Holt & DeVore, 2005). Depending on the level of concern, the theory will show different styles of managing conflict. There are about five actions that will be revealed: yielding or obliging, integrating or problem solving, forcing or dominating, avoiding, and compromising (Cai & Fink, 2002).
According to Pruitt & Rubin’s dual concern theory, first, if a person has generally high concern of self interest and low concern for others interest, that person will have a tendency to use a forcing or dominating conflict style. This type of preference is rather inclined to control the argument and coerce others follow one's will (Cai & Fink, 2002; Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Holt & DeVore, 2005; Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). Second, if a person has own concern of self interest and high concern for others, that person will have a tendency to use a yielding or obliging conflict style. This type of preference is rather inclined with accepting other people's interest to preserve relationships (Cai & Fink, 2002; Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Holt & DeVore, 2005; Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). Third, if a person has low concern of self interest and low concern for others interest, that person will have a tendency to use an avoidance conflict style. This type of preference is rather inclined with ignoring a conflict with hopes that the conflict will go away on its own (Cai & Fink, 2002; Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Holt & DeVore, 2005; Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). Fourth, if a person has high concern of self interest and high concern for others interest, that person will have a tendency to use an integrating or problem solving conflict style. This type of preference is rather inclined with great effort where there is willingness to solve conflicts by finding solutions that are mutually acceptable for both parties to produce optimal result (Cai & Fink, 2002; Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Holt & DeVore, 2005; Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996). Lastly, if a person has moderate concern of self interest and moderate concern for others interest, that person will have a tendency to use a compromising conflict style. This type of preference is rather inclined with adequate effort in finding solutions for problems. This style may also be inclined to produce a mutually acceptable solution; however, there may be less effort in finding optimal results (Cai & Fink, 2002; Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Holt & DeVore, 2005; Jassen & van de Vliert, 1996).
Ideally, the compromising style should have moderated concern in both self and other’s interest, but a compromising style is generally focused on moderate self interest. If there is high or low concern for other’s interest but moderate concern for one’s own, a compromising style is still exhibited (Cai & Fink, 2002).
In my case, the dual-concern theory generalized my actions in taking the comprising conflict style to address the concessions of my group mates. My situation may seem to be a yielding or obliging conflict style since I was forced to change topics, but my group mates only suggested changing my topic of choice and finding another topic of interest that can be connected to theirs. They did not choose my new topic for me, but rather I chose a new topic for myself. I tried to find a way to create a mutually acceptable result; however, my new topic is really not what I want to report about so there may be a slightly diminished effort or a decrease in my willingness in making my report since it is not my initial choice.
Individual, Team, Organization, and Global Community
The central challenge that I revealed is about compromise. Everyone engage in multiple negations to reach a certain agreement that usually resulted from compromises between competing interests. Compromise is usually done in order to develop and maintain good relationship between two parties. Otherwise, if there is no compromise and agreement among parties, a relationship can be ended (Cai & Fink, 2002). Compromise can be observed at different kinds of interaction:
Individual
Compromise between individuals, for example, is the compromise between a buyer and a seller. A salesman may interest a product to a potential customer, such as a brand new house; however, the potential customer may not agree with the price and try to find another salesman with a better deal than the previous salesman. This may prompt the salesman to reduce the original amount of the product to adequately satisfy the price range of the customer and make a sale. This can actually make a lasting relationship where the buyer can become a frequent costumer of the salesman. The salesman may also reject the proposal of the customer and retain the price of the product, and if the customer really needs the product and can’t find another seller, the customer will need to compromise with the adequate price to acquire the must needed product. Initially, the seller wants to sell the house at a higher price while the potential customer wants to buy the house at a lower price. However, if the cost of compromise between individuals is greater than the benefit of the transaction, then, the deal is off (Mutho, 2000).
Teams
Compromise within a team, for example, is the compromise in the allocation of collaborative profit for every participant in a collaborative work. Let’s consider a scenario; a group agreed that they will conduct a food sale as an income generating project. They decided to make cookies since it’s one of the easiest foods to make and sell. Group members need to equally give effort to finish the project. During the baking of the cookies, it was observed that different members can bake different number of cookies in one hour. One member can make 40 cookies while another member can make 10 cookies. After selling all the cookies they generated a huge sale success; however, the key problem is how to distribute the collaborative profits among the individual members of the team to ensure the fairness to all (Liu, Wu, & Xu, 2010). One of the member stated that the total income should be divided equally since it is a group effort; however, it was evident that there is a huge difference with regards the contribution of the members to the project. Another member stated that there should be higher pay to those with greater contributions compared to those with smaller contributions. The group negotiated the proper income allocation should be based on the difference in marginal contribution of each member based on higher utilization of their skills and abilities (Liu, Wu, & Xu, 2010).
Organization
Compromise is a problem in every organization especially when cooperating with other organizations. When it comes to finding out the cost allocation of a joint organizational operation, an effective interpretation for the cost allotment of each organization is important (Roth & Verrecchia, 1979). For example, two organizations are planning an inter-organizational activity for the improvement of its members. Initially, each organization wanted a solo organizational activity but the cost is $7000. Organization A that has 150 members has Organization B has 100 members. The total cost of doing an inter-organization activity is $10,000. This shows great benefit to both organizations. Initially, organization A proposed that the total cost should be divided equally, making $5,000 contribution for each organization. However, organization B proposed that the total cost should be divided among individual participants, making $40 contribution if each member, or $4000 contribution of organization B and a $6000 contribution of organization A. The joint cost allocation shares mutual benefits for the two organizations, but the joint shared services with regards on how the cost would be shared needs compromise to achieve an agreement that is beneficial to both (Roth & Verrecchia, 1979).
Global Community
Compromise among global communities, for example, is the compromise between international companies and the taxation guidelines of a developing country. International company investments affect a developing country’s economy especially in production of jobs and services. An international company may want to invest but is limited to the tax liabilities that a developing country is implementing. A developing country can compromise and decrease these tax liabilities or remove trade restrictions to attract potential investors to solve social issues like unemployment. Also, all of these will be done with the continuous negotiations of government officials until they arrive at a mutual agreement on whether accept or decline the compromise about the taxation laws of the land (Mutho, 2000).
Theory
According to Sanfey (2007), Game Theory is the study of very complex models of strategic interactions that is attempting to understand and explain situations in which decision-makers must interact with one another to create mutual agreement from the resulting interactions. The goal of Game theory is to find a way where each party would most likely to find an agreement to cooperate or compromise with each other in order to establish a relationship (Muthoo, 2000). Added by Sanfey (2007), one focus of game theory is about the interactions of people in terms of bargaining behavior between individuals or groups. There are other areas of interest in game theory but I will focus only in the bargaining area. Early contributors in the studying bargaining aspect of game theory were Howard Raiffa, John Sanyi, and John Nash (Chatterjee, 1996). In the simplest sense, the bargaining process is to insist the terms that are favorable to a person, or to accept the terms that are favorable to another party (Stahl, 1974). In game theory, the bargaining game model is set to lay out the possible decisions that negotiators would make during the bargaining process and deciding about making offers (Sanfey, 2007). Usually, parties involve takes time to finish the negotiations since most of the time parties will insist on the terms that are most favorable to them and will be stuck in a series of counter demands (Muthoo, 2000). The game theory of bargaining provides the basis for "investigating the fundamental behavioral questions of self-interest and fairness as driving force in human action (Chatterjee, 1996)."
In the example of the individual level where the salesman is selling a product to a potential buyer, this scenario shows a bargaining process of both parties at a personal level until both parties that can reach an agreement by indefinitely changing the price of the product through multiple offers and counter offer (Mutho, 2000). This act of changing the price is obtained using game theory. In the team level, game theory is observed by making an accepted profit allocation of selling of products. The mechanisms where the team finds a way to discuss profit allocation is based on the game theory in dividing the profit through individual marginal contribution to the cookie sale (Liu, Wu, & Xu, 2010). If an interaction involves people outside the group or organization, mutual agreement is a problem when it comes with cooperation Likewise with the problem of proper profit allocation to achieve mutual agreement among the parties involve, proper cost allocation is also addressed by game theory in terms of creating a mutual benefit (Roth & Verrecchia, 1979). To top all the negotiation and bargaining to create mutual agreement, government policies are based on the agreement of the cabinet members and the legislations of law makers to meet a countries leader, such as Presidents and Prime ministers, depending on the outcome of the negotiations of the dominant political parties in a country (Muthoo, 2000). Also, added by Mutho (2000), most national governments are involve with interacting to other countries, where they usually raise different international matters such are environmental issues, human rights issues, territorial issues, and other issues that needs international awareness where mutual agreement is needed from different world leaders to solve these issues.
How you were impacted by the process of experiencing a virtual and face-to-face self-managed team?
Virtual teams are teams where members utilize the use of technology, like a personal computer or a smart phone, to work and accomplish task across location, temporal and relational boundaries (Gera, 2013). ...